terrydtx

The gratuities are included in your SS with the standard Retreat amenities and only a portion goes to the Butler team.

Well that answers a lot😁

How are you liking your Oceania cruise so far? We booked our first one in March 2025 after Celebrity pulled out of the South America market this last month.

We are looking at doing the same cruise in 2025 on HAL. We are Elite on Celebrity and 3 Star on HAL. We are to the point in our travels that we look at itinerary first and then the cruise line. Our past 5 cruises on Celebrity have been in Sky Suites with the Retreat. Our last two HAL cruises have been in Signature Suites, which have a name with no real suite amenities. Last year we had a SS on the Reflection from Rome followed by a 14 night cruise from Venice on the HAL Oosterdam. We love the extra amenities of the Retreat, smaller private restaurant and the lounge. Priority boarding and tendering is also nice. Overall we felt the food on the Oosterdam was superior to Celebrity and Luminae. Celebrity had better shows and bars but again overall I would rate both cruises about the same for satisfaction/ We are doing a one week cruise in November on one of the newer HAL Pinnacle class ships the Koingsdam in an Aft facing verandah cabin. We booked this with the HAL HIA promo for drinks, Wi-Fi and one night in a specialty restaurant and a $200 shore excursion credit. We also booked with the HAL Club Orange which provides breakfast and dinners in the Club Orange private restaurant with an enhanced MDR menu, we get an enhanced room service menu and priority boarding and tendering. BTW HAL doesn't not charge for room service in any cabin category. CO costs $25 pp per night to add on or $50 per cabin per night. The 3 new Pinnacle class ships all have the dedicated CO dining room. The 2025 British Isles cruise we are looking at is on one of these new ships, The New Statendam with CO dining room. With HAL if you book very early you can get the Early Booking promo with the HIA and get the Premium Bev package, Premium Wi-Fi and prepaid gratuities along with the other standard HIA amenities. We did this for our Volendam cruise next August which we booked with Club Orange to get priority tendering and the enhanced MDR menu in the MDR (no club orange dr). We booked this cruise for the better itinerary over Celebrity and Oceania we also booked in a Vista Suite with a balcony.

Again, whether you use a butler or not is NOT the issue here, people who have booked and paid for cruises prior to the butler change, are NOT getting what the booked and paid for.

No it was reported that all the sky suites only had 5 butlers as their team.

Is that per person or total for 2?

One post I saw said on E Class ships with over 130 Sky, Sky Aqua, Sky Sunset and Sky Magic Carper suites now only have 5 butlers to service all of them. I see no way they will be able to deliver our RS breakfasts.

When you check in is first come first serve and the early slots will fill up first. If you are in the Retreat you can check in at the cruise terminal anytime you want regardless of the time slot you got when you checked in online.

In June I ordered the "warm water" lobster in Murano on the Equinox, I took one bite and it tasted awful and was so tough and stringy. I sent it back and ordered the Dover Sole which was delicious. Maybe it is being removed from the menu, finally.

On the Equinox in June with the new Starlink system we found making both voice (Wi-Fi calling) and video calls only worked with the premium Wi-Fi and it was so much better than the old systems. We also were able to receive incoming calls too.

On the Reflection and Equinox we had a large round table on the balcony that the butlers would set up for our breakfasts.

We did not book a suite with a butler on the Oceania cruise, but its not like booking a Sky Suite with a butler that is not the same as we booked. We can live without a butler when we book a cabin that doesn't have one to begin with. If a SS had never had a butler not having one now would be no big deal, but we booked and paid for cruises with an advertised dedicated butler. We will be on the Apex in 3 weeks and will find out for ourselves what this new Team will do and will not do compared to our past butler experiences. For example, when our butlers have brought our room service breakfasts to our cabin, they would set up our table with a tablecloth and even pour our first cup of coffee. From some current posts I have read the butlers no longer bring your breakfast to the cabin, regular room service personnel bring the breakfast on a tray and just leave it in the room with no set ups as in the past. It is the little things like this that set the Retreat apart from the service in the rest of the ship that we have paid to have.

I paid and booked my SS cruises on the basis that my dedicated butler would deliver my espresso every morning from Cafe al Bacio and it looks like that is not the case. I am owed restitution by Celebrity.

The lobster is a warm water lobster tail and not worth the cost to dine in Murano. I ordered it on the Equinox in June, took one bite and sent it back to get the Sole which was delicious. The lobster had a terrible taste and was tough and stringy.

We have done 9:30 flights from FLL with no problems. The airport is 10-15 minutes from the port.

That is good to know, we have Eden booked next month, I was hoping the lobster wasn't the same warm water ones they serve in Murano.

We board the Apex on the 14th so we are following your trip. We fly to AMS 3 days early.

We are booked on this tour in January from Brisbane but I have no more information other than what is on the Celebrity website. We looked at doing a private tour but could not find one that would pick us up at the ship. Most said we would need to take a 45 minute taxi ride to the starting point, something we didn't want to do.

Don't forget the free scoop of Gelato?😂

We looked at Regent and they were out of our price range too. But I am finding we can book on Oceania for about the same or less for a similar Celebrity itinerary in a SS.

Ours too for the same reasons.

I remember something about their newest ship launching this year has an area similar to the retreat.

Worst case is when you board you can change the reservation with the Eden manager,

We took a look at Princess suites but we just do not want to cruise on a ship with 4000+ passengers. They do have services close to the Retreat. Here is a link to them. Full suite (princess.com)